Freelance work and liability

Bennymc

Hi MSEers

I’m posting on behalf of my fiance who is struggling with a previous ‘employer’ (a post office branch) for whom she did self-employed freelance work. I’ll be as detailed and as brief as I can.

One day she was accused of making a mistake that was not in fact made by her, causing a customer’s outstanding utility bill of £800 to be marked as paid when only £25 of it should have been paid (the mistake was actually made by an energy supplier, who blamed the post office and as it was my fiance that served the guy, she got the blame). Since then, they have been withholding £100 a month from her invoice payments until the ‘debt’ is cleared – even though it’s not even a mistake she made. They said that if they could recover the other £750 from the customer then they would reimburse her but would otherwise just pay £100 less on the invoice amount every month.

With this she decided to stop doing work for this company 2 months after the incident having lost £200. She sent a final invoice for work carried out and included the £200 withheld from her. However they’ve just sent her an email, first of all telling her off for not giving any notice (she’d been working as a freelancer for around 8 months, not as an employee per se) and said that she was still liable for the loss and would start legal proceedings against her if she didn’t pay it.

I know very little about freelance workers’ rights and what an ‘employer’ (for lack of a better description) can realistically/legally ask for? They appear to be blurring the lines between employment and hired contractual work to me, playing on the ‘self-employed’ bit where convenient but acting like the workers are employees whenever it suits

Thanks in advance

BorisThomson

What does the contract for services state about liability?

What kind of work was she doing? If she was doing counter work then it's quite likely that she is an employee or worker rather than self employed. Her rights will differ if this is the case (including the right to holiday pay).

Bennymc

Hi, thanks for you reply

Contract said nothing about liability. She did work on the counter, but they made it clear she was self employed and she was paid via monthly invoice rather than salary/wage.

Bennymc

Additionally, she was not given any entitlement to holiday or sick pay - one example of them appearing to blur the lines

sangie595

It's relatively easy to prove where the mistake was made. If the mistake was made at the post office there would be a clear record of the customer paying only £25 and that £25 being in all the transactional records at their end. Including the outgoing payment.

If she is indeed a freelance worker, then she should have made sure that she was insured for any liability as a result of her actions. If she was not, then that would, I'm afraid, be her problem. If she were an employee, then I would expect that the employer would have insurance for this. Without a clear contractual term they would not be able to deduct this from wages. But that does not mean that they couldn't possibly take court action to recover from her if she is responsible.

Assuming she is quite certain that they have no evidence that she did this - and to be clear, just because she told you she didn't does not mean she didn't (unpalatable fact - people don't always tell the truth about things they do or don't do) - then I would tend to say "bring it on" because they will have to prove that she owes anything, and that means proving it was her mistake. I doubt they will. But then, she would have to take legal action to recover the deductions, and if she does that she should expect them to retaliate with the claim for the £800.

I'm ignoring the employment status because in terms of the £800 it isn't particularly relevant. If you are thinking about claiming holiday pay etc., then it would matter, but if you want to go there, you would need to provide much more context to her terms of employment.

Undervalued

BorisThomson wrote: »

What kind of work was she doing? If she was doing counter work then it's quite likely that she is an employee or worker rather than self employed. Her rights will differ if this is the case (including the right to holiday pay).

Yes but keep in mind it is perfectly possible to end up in a situation where HMRC will say that somebody is an employee for tax purposes but an employment tribunal takes the opposite view when trying to assert employment rights! A court assessing liability for a mistake could even take a third view. None of which would be binding on the others!

It has happened.